Rancher Labs vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

Rancher Labs and Splunk are both solutions in the Container Management category. Rancher Labs is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.8, while Splunk is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.6. Rancher Labs holds a 8.9% mindshare in CM, compared to Splunk’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Rancher Labs users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

Rancher Labs

Read 14 Rancher Labs reviews

3,904 Views
2,996 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Splunk Observability Cloud

Read 50 Splunk Observability Cloud reviews

107 Views
55 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Rancher Labs

Splunk Observability Cloud

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 6, 2025

Splunk Observability Cloud and Rancher Labs compete in the monitoring and application management category. While both offer strong features, Rancher Labs may have the upper hand with its affordability and ease of use for Kubernetes environments.

Features: Splunk Observability Cloud stands out with powerful log searching, comprehensive reporting tools, and customizable dashboards for various use cases, making it ideal for monitoring and detailed application performance insights. Rancher Labs excels in container management with an intuitive interface for Kubernetes, offering robust resource scaling and open-source flexibility, making it easy to manage complex environments.

Room for Improvement: Splunk Observability Cloud users report issues with high pricing, complicated configurations, and integration challenges, suggesting a need for better scalability and automation. Rancher Labs needs to enhance its upgrade process and security features, with recommendations for improved multicloud deployment support and tool integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk Observability Cloud faces criticism for complex deployment, though its customer service is generally well-received despite some response time concerns. Rancher Labs benefits from its open-source model, offering deployment flexibility but needing more substantial support options, although community assistance is a plus.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk Observability Cloud is often critiqued for its high cost, seen as a barrier despite providing a positive ROI in efficiency. Conversely, Rancher Labs, through its open-source approach, presents a more cost-effective alternative, with users appreciating the lower expenditure in comparison, making it an attractive option for businesses seeking an economical solution with operational efficiency returns.

To learn more, read our detailed Rancher Labs vs. Splunk Observability Cloud Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Rancher Labs vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

February 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Rancher Labs

Ranking in Container Management

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Storage for Kubernetes (3rd)

Splunk Observability Cloud

Ranking in Container Management

8th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (11th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Rancher Labs is 8.9%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 0.5%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Container Management

Featured Reviews

RyanVassallo

Head of Systems and Infrastructure at Booming Games

Offers an open-source version along with a good UI

The product has multiple good features. One of the solution's good features is that it is the GitOps functionality known as Rancher fleet, which is used for continuous delivery. The tool's UI is very convenient enough to help you manage multiple clusters in the cloud or on-premises, making it a product with which you can manage different clusters and locations. The tool also has a feature that is still kind of maturing, but I think it has very good potential. This new feature is named Harvester, which is allows users to have virtual machines managed by Kubernetes engine. This is very new technology in the market. I think that Harvester needs to mature as a product, and I think that in the future, it will be very powerful. You have one tool that does many things for you.

Read full review

Lakshmi Padaga

Java Developer at U.S. Bank

Collaborates performance metrics with log data to pinpoint the exact cause of issues and offers error detection

Splunk APM is a robust tool with many capabilities. There are always areas for potential improvement to enhance its functionality and user experience. For Splunk APM, there could be simplified navigation, like streamlining the user interface to make navigation more intuitive for our users, especially those new to APM, which can enhance usability. We can provide more customization options for dashboards and visualizations to help users tailor the platform to their specific needs. There could be more integration capabilities with a wider range of third-party tools and platforms would also be beneficial. By focusing on these areas, Splunk APM can enhance its value proposition, improve user satisfaction, and better meet the evolving needs of organizations monitoring their application performance.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"This solution is not vendor-locked, which means that we we are able to use it across all of our resources; this feature is of great value to us."

"The tool's UI is very convenient enough to help you manage multiple clusters in the cloud or the company, making it a product with which you can manage different clusters and locations."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is an open-source solution that is easy to deploy."

"The most valuable feature of Rancher Labs is its user interface, which makes it easier to work with containers and deployment."

"The customized deployment process is the most valuable feature in Rancher Labs."

"The product is simple to use for a beginner."

"The scalability potential is very good."

"The initial setup is simple and straightforward."

More Rancher Labs pros

"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring reduces our mean time to resolve. We are more proactive than reactive."

"It is a great resource for us because we have so many different data sources and to be able to aggregate that and put it through a concise dashboard or an alert really helps."

"I have primarily used it to go back into the past and understand why something happened. It provides enough information to do research and figure things out."

"The features are pretty much ready out of the box."

"The data collection from our VMs, containers, databases, and backend components is valuable."

"This solution is very quick to deploy as it is a SaaS solution and integrates with tools like ServiceNow."

"The tool is efficient in collecting, monitoring and evaluating logs."

"The product retains a lot of log data for subsequent analysis."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pros

Cons

"The biggest room for improvement in Rancher Labs would be to have a proper upgrading plan."

"While Rancher Labs provides some level of security, it's not considered very robust."

"Could be more intuitive."

"They should improve application visibility along with code visibility."

"If you have poor infrastructure, you will have issues with the tool."

"The solution could improve by adding more features in the dashboard, such as monitoring, scanning, and security. This would be a great benefit."

"We'd like their monitoring tool to be integrated by default."

"One area for improvement in Rancher Labs is the development aspect."

More Rancher Labs cons

"The solution's machine learning deployment is hard and should be made user-friendly."

"A lot of customers had a hard time effectively searching within the data in Splunk. There is a learning curve from searches to indexes and using all the macros that we have created. It is a little difficult for somebody who has not used it quite a bit and does not have a lot of practice with it, but the AI features that we have been hearing about through Splunk will make it a lot easier for us to use human language to search this data. That is big. That is pretty powerful, and that will help a lot with our customers."

"This solution is difficult to configure and the instructions are complex."

"The implementation can be more user-friendly."

"One thing I recently ran into was that the logs on the server most often get Gzipped after they have been rotated. We found that we were not monitoring some of the things, so we had to go back and pull them in. Right now, it pulls one at a time, untars it, or unzips it, so I cannot look at the entire history. There can be an improvement in that area."

"The cost needs to be re-examined. It's extremely expensive to run. It's also expensive to expand. That's the number one complaint all of my customers have when it comes to Splunk. It's way too expensive compared to other solutions."

"It's a bit difficult to use. It takes some time to get into it and to get it to do what you would like it to do. It is not straightforward to use it."

"They can improve the flow system and the keyword language. It has predefined keywords, but they can be improved."

More Splunk Observability Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is reasonable since it's open source. Rancher effectively addresses container orchestration trends, especially for those with some Kubernetes knowledge."

"This is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs involved."

"The pricing of the solution sits in the mid range, not high and not low. It has a fixed price that you pay every month."

"The solution is free and open source but there is a fee for support."

"Although Rancher Labs is an open-source solution, they also offer a paid version, where you buy the support when needed."

"There are no hidden charges attached to the product unless a user opts for the premium support offered by the solution."

"There is an annual subscription. The price of the solution should be cheaper and have better pricing flexibility."

"The product is a bit expensive considering the competition but the company may negotiate the price."

"I am not in that circle, but we are currently licensing based on our queries. That is working out for us. Previously, it was by volume of data, and now, we can store as much data as we want."

"Splunk APM is expensive."

"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring is an expensive solution."

"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."

"Splunk APM is a very cost-efficient solution."

"I would rate the price of Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring as an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."

"It appears to be expensive compared to competitors."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

25%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Rancher Labs?

The tool's UI is very convenient enough to help you manage multiple clusters in the cloud or the company, making it a product with which you can manage different clusters and locations.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rancher Labs?

The cost is reasonable since it's open-source. Rancher effectively addresses container orchestration trends, especially for those with some Kubernetes knowledge.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Rancher Labs?

While Rancher Labs provides some level of security, it's not considered very robust. We found it to offer basic security features, which met some of our requirements, but we also relied on other op...

See all answers

What do you like most about SignalFx?

The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SignalFx?

There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available. We sometimes encountered issues in setting up alerts. The custom detector could be m...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SignalFx?

The main purpose of using Splunk APM is to optimize our application. We use Splunk APM primarily to understand how the application works, how it uses resources, and its response time in connection ...

See all answers

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 22% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Dynatrace vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon CloudWatch vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

ServiceNow IT Operations Management vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Rancher Labs

March 2025

Download Rancher Labs product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Observability Cloud

March 2025

Download Splunk Observability Cloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring

Overview

Rancher Labs build innovative, open source software that makes it easy to deploy and manage containers in production on any infrastructure. We enable organizations to accelerate all aspects of their software development pipeline, from writing and testing code to running complex microservices-based applications.

Rancher, our flagship container management platform, allows users to easily manage all aspects of running containers in development and production environments, on any infrastructure. With well over four million downloads, Rancher has quickly become the tools of choice for teams serious about running containers in production. This includes large enterprises such as Sony, IBM, Tyco, Align Technologies and more.

Rancher Labs

Splunk Observability Cloud combines log search, data integration, and dashboards for seamless monitoring, enhancing infrastructure visibility and security. Its cloud integration and scalability support diverse environments, improving operational efficiency.

Splunk Observability Cloud offers comprehensive monitoring tools with user-friendly interfaces, enabling end-to-end infrastructure visibility. Its real-time alerting and predictive capabilities enhance security monitoring, while centralized dashboards provide cross-platform visibility. Users benefit from fast data integration and extensive insights into application performance. Despite its advantages, improvements could be made in integration with other tools, data reliability, scalability, and cost management. Users face challenges in configuration complexity and require better automation and endpoint protection features. Enhancing AI integration, alerts, and adaptation for high-throughput services could further improve usability.

What are the key features of Splunk Observability Cloud?

Log Search: Efficiently search and analyze log data for enhanced insights.
Data Integration: Fast integration across platforms for comprehensive visibility.
Custom Dashboards: Powerful and adaptable dashboards for real-time monitoring.
Cloud Integration: Seamless integration with cloud services for scalable solutions.
Application Performance Monitoring: Advanced tools for improving application performance.

What benefits and ROI should be expected?

Infrastructure Monitoring: Improved visibility and monitoring across infrastructure components.
Operational Efficiency: Enhancements in data analysis lead to efficient operations.
Business Resilience: Supports adaptability and swift responses to changing needs.
Security Management: Enhances threat identification and response through real-time alerts.
Compliance Support: Aids in meeting compliance and auditing requirements effectively.

In industries like finance and healthcare, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for application performance monitoring and infrastructure metrics. Its ability to track incidents and analyze machine data benefits network infrastructure, while distributed tracing and log analysis aid in tackling security threats. Organizations often integrate it for compliance and auditing purposes, enhancing visibility into network traffic and optimizing performance.

Splunk

Sample Customers

Albert Heijn, Bell, BMC, Samsung, WindStream, Johnson & Johnson

Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara

Buyer's Guide

Rancher Labs vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

February 2025

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